Code Summaries as Diagnostic Context for LLM-Based Program Repair

[2511.18782] Code Summaries as Diagnostic Context for LLM-Based Program Repair Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Computer Science > Software Engineering arXiv:2511.18782 (cs) [Submitted on 24 Nov 2025 ( v1 ), last revised 27 Aug 2026 (this version, v2)] Title: Code Summaries as Diagnostic Context for LLM-Based Program Repair Authors: Lukas Twist , Jie M. Zhang View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: LLMs can generate useful code, but their outputs often contain small implementation-level bugs with large behavioural effects. In this paper, we ask whether natural-language code summaries provide useful diagnostic context for repairing these errors. We use summary-mediated repair as a simple prompt-only test of their diagnostic value: an LLM first summarises buggy code, then generates a candidate repair conditioned on that summary. We evaluate summary-mediated repair across eight LLMs in two function-level repair settings: existing bugs from HumanEvalPack and LLMs' own failed generations of MBPP. Diagnostic, error-aware summaries perform best, repairing up to 65% of previously unseen errors and improving over direct repair by 5% on average. However, overall gains are modest and model-dependent, and summaries do little to overcome the difficulty of prompt-only self-repair. Overall, our results suggest that code summaries are a useful lightweight diagnostic layer for LLM-based program repair, but not a complete repair method on their own. Comments: 7 pages, 3 tables, 1 figure Subjects: Software Engineering (cs.SE) Cite as: arXiv:2511.18782 [cs.SE] (or arXiv:2511.18782v2 [cs.SE] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.18782 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Lukas Twist [ view email ] [v1] Mon, 24 Nov 2025 05:33:38 UTC (264 KB) [v2] Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:35:31 UTC (265 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: cs.SE < prev | next > new | recent | 2025-11 Change to browse by: cs References & Citations SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

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